The Killing – A grieving Mitch almost killed the boys

That scene was harrowing … the one featuring the riveting Michelle Forbes as the grieving mother Mitch Larsen who nearly killed her two young sons by mistake while she was glued to the TV where images of her murdered daughter’s body were being aired for all to see.

I realized that I was holding my breath, fully expecting that when the boys’ aunt approached the car that the boys would be dead, or at least unconscious. The Killing seems edgy enough to have the boys die accidentally.

Mitch has been completely swallowed up by her anguish at the brutal and sudden loss of her daughter so much so that it’s almost as if she doesn’t really see her two sons. When she turned on the ignition while the car was still in the garage, I kept thinking that the door had to be open, right? She wouldn’t be so distracted by the fact that her daughter’s killer was still free that she’d turn on the car with the garage door closed and asphyxiate her sons, would she? She wouldn’t leave the car running while she went upstairs, that’s just crazy, I thought.

You can’t blame Mitch, of course, but it’s been nerve-wracking to watch her character unravel as she marinates in her misery. However I think that her husband Stan’s patience for her withdrawal into herself may be running low, particularly given what almost happened with the boys and would’ve happened had Terry not walked in at the right moment. When the spouses start to turn on one another, that’s clearly not a good sign, only days after Rosie’s murder. And damn, did I cringe when I saw that Stan had packed up Rosie’s room and took down her butterfly collage.

Meanwhile, Sarah Linden, who we might as well agree is never going to go to California, is just as obsessed and sucked into Rosie’s case as is Mitch. Sarah appears blinded or indifferent to the impact of her absence and her unwillingness to just state the obvious — that she’s not going to go to California and get married — on her son Jack. His life has been uprooted and left dangling. Is he going to go to a new school in California or is he going to keep attending school in Seattle? How long will he be living out of a suitcase on a houseboat not knowing where he’s going to live?

Clearly his e-mailing of the Larsen crime scene photos to all his buddies was a cry for attention that his mother can’t, or won’t, acknowledge because she’s utterly absorbed by the case, the same way Mitch can’t see what her withdrawal is doing to her sons.

As for the rest of the episode, it was a stew of character development with precious little advancement of the murder case other than the fact that a shirt thought to belong to Rosie was found in that old meat store warehouse, a location where FBI officials think terrorism-related activities are ongoing.

We discovered that Stephen Holder’s a recovering drug addict, clean for six months, and that, at his rock bottom, he stole from his 7-year-old nephew.

We also caught a glimpse of Darren Richmond’s violent side when he smashed a bathroom mirror in the courthouse after watching the woman who accidentally killed his wife in a drunk driving accident make tearful pleas to the parole board. (This propelled the high minded, moral mayoral candidate to give the green light to leak damaging personal information about his opponent  to the media, directly against his previous statement that he wouldn’t allow the campaign devolve into personal attacks, which struck me as curious. The close-up of his bloodied hand and what appeared to be a wedding ring, on the right hand, was also provocative.)

Hearing Bennet Ahmed making strange comments over the phone, some in Somali, to someone regarding passports and things being “all over soon” just smacked of red herring. It couldn’t be that easy, that the teacher did it, could it?

My latest theory: There’s more to the crumb dropped by the imam in last week’s episode about the fact that there’s another missing girl whose case is essentially being ignored by law enforcement. Connected?

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on May 16, 2011 @ 14:00 EST5EDT